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Helen

Today marks the start of the second half of my studentship. I feel really refreshed and ready to be back and start work. Fabiana suggested I start writing down a summary of everything I have learnt so far and the things that I don't know. I also summarised the main journal articles I read at the end of the break which gave me some really insightful information about the current theories of cranial nerve assembly. Although I didn't come to any huge conclusions at the end of it and still felt like I wasn't making much progress I had at least clarified my ideas and got them down in paper to re-read. It was interesting to see how much more I took from the journal articles after a break, I understood so much more of what I was reading and everything became a lot clearer. I realised that at the end of my first half I was getting very worn out and I see now that that actually impaired my intellectual capacity to understand what I was reading. I have attached the pdf of my scanned notes and will at some point hope to type them up to make them searchable.
The link below should open the pdf file of my scanned notes

Today I also dissected a stage 16.5 and attempted to dye it but the nerves got very severed in the process and I didn't realise how much more difficult they would be to find in the stage 16.5. I doubt the dye penetrated properly of the trigeminal nerve becuase I was too afraid I was going to tear it off completely, that I rationalised that I should keep what bit I did have left attached to the hindbrain on and dye that. However I feel like a lot of it was just connective tissue and won't penetrate. At such a young age are the nerves sheathed properly yet? as they don't seem like discrete bundles unlike older ages where if you tug gently on the connective tissue surrounding the nerve it comes off seperate from the nerve and very cleanly.